WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The case is a major reexamination of the rights and acceptance of gay people in the United States. More broadly, it also tests a state's ability to classify as a crime what goes on behind the closed bedroom doors of consenting adults.

Thursday's ruling invalidated a Texas law against "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex."

Defending that law, Texas officials said that it promoted the institutions of marriage and family, and argued that communities have the right to choose their own standards.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

The law "demeans the lives of homosexual persons," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.

That is what laws against immorality are supposed to do! I predict that the next laws to be nullified will be those regarding sex workers/prostitution. After all, that is between two consenting adults in private as well.

"The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."

The two men at the heart of the case, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, have retreated from public view. They were each fined $200 and spent a night in jail for the misdemeanor sex charge in 1998.

The case began when a neighbor with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's apartment. Police went to the apartment, pushed open the door and found the two men having anal sex.

As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four  Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri  prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling apparently invalidates those laws as well.

The Supreme Court was widely criticized 17 years ago when it upheld an antisodomy law similar to Texas'. The ruling became a rallying point for gay activists.

Of the nine justices who ruled on the 1986 case, only three remain on the court. Rehnquist was in the majority in that case  Bowers v. Hardwick  as was O'Connor. Stevens dissented.

A long list of legal and medical groups joined gay rights and human rights supporters in backing the Texas men. Many friend-of-the-court briefs argued that times have changed since 1986, and that the court should catch up.

At the time of the court's earlier ruling, 24 states criminalized such behavior. States that have since repealed the laws include Georgia, where the 1986 case arose.

Texas defended its sodomy law as in keeping with the state's interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing. Homosexual sodomy, the state argued in legal papers, "has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with these sacred choices."

The state had urged the court to draw a constitutional line "at the threshold of the marital bedroom."

Although Texas itself did not make the argument, some of the state's supporters told the justices in friend-of-the-court filings that invalidating sodomy laws could take the court down the path of allowing same-sex marriage.

For some reason--I must be a complete idiot--I can't find this right to privacy in the Constitution. I can find this:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

(Fourth Amendment)

I'm kinda confused. Please help this moron who is getting the feeling that the Court is lurching left. If I'm right, and I must not be--after all, the Supremes are Supreme--it must be time for Stevens and O'Conner to retire, replaced by, say, Estrada and Owens.

24
posted on 06/26/2003 7:44:27 AM PDT
by dufekin
(Peace HAS COME AT LONG LAST to the tortured people of Iraq!)

Tnere may be no right to privacy in the Constitution, but, once the Supreme Court had claimed to have discovered it, and applied it to abortion, it was always strange that it was not applied to homosexuality.

After the court ruled that child porn was legal so long as it was conducted virtually -- are you surprised by this. I guess this is not a ruling that Gephardt would issue an executive order to overturn.

Kennedy is a senile old fool who ignored the 'how' this case got to the courts, the 'set up' perpetrated by the homos to get this case running the court system. The queers involved (three of them) had been trying to get a Georgia case going on homo marriage. Well, the senile old fart, Kennedy, has made their day!

In queer dens all over America, the homos are laughing their asses off, salivating over their 'victory'. If folks don't realize what's going on, here's a clue: the entire exercise was part of the homo agenda to force their deviant behavior to be protected and given the same right to marriages, etc., equal to the traditional institution of marriage. The homo agenda is to transform this nation into their deviancy play ground.

Frankly, it won't be as difficult as the queers were thinking it would be ... as Kennedy and others have proven for them. Homo marriage is the next case they will seek to push through the putrified court system. Democrats, with their decidely leftist pallor, will empower the deviants even more, all in the name of division and vote raking, and the hell with the nation. See, leftists realize but will not tell you, when they do finally take control of this nation, even if it means corrupting it to the point of mortality, they will then dictate how the nation is to carry on, under their whim regardless of those moldy old 'living, yet senile documents'. The democrat left will make other forms of despotism pale by comparison.

32
posted on 06/26/2003 7:51:29 AM PDT
by MHGinTN
(If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote Life Support for others.)

This is why it is of utmost urgency to pray for the justice system in our nation. It is essential to get conservative, clear thinking judges in, despite the democrats. We need warfare praying for this. If we don't have a shift in the judicial system, we are sliding into more and more bad judgements. May God help us all.

34
posted on 06/26/2003 7:52:04 AM PDT
by Marysecretary
(GOD is still in control!)

Yet another reason why we need to make sure we get (and keep) a larger Senate majority in 2004 so we can get some REAL conservative justices on the bench instead of the milquetoast liberal justices put on there by both Democrap and previous Repulican administrations.

Kennedy: "The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals." (Emphasis added).

Those italicized words are a reference to gay marriage and domestic partnerships.

Texas defended its sodomy law as in keeping with the state's interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing. Homosexual sodomy, the state argued in legal papers, "has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with these sacred choices."

Thanks for posting the extra text.

The state has a legitimate interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing.

Regarding whether this decision will open the door to the legality of bestiality, bigamy, prostitution, and incest...I suspect that at some point prostitution will be legalized. And at some point further in the future incest between adults will be legalized. I don't think that sex with children, nor bestiality, will be legalized because in neither case can the "consenting adult" argument be made. I suspect that someday polygamy might also be legalized. The reason will be that the second and third and however many more "spouses" will want the same property and legal rights regarding children as the first wife. Hoo boy. What an interesting age we live in. Keep an eye peeled for massive comets that will cause flooding and fire.

42
posted on 06/26/2003 8:01:07 AM PDT
by dark_lord
(The Statue of Liberty now holds a baseball bat and she's yelling 'You want a piece of me?')

"--I can't find this right to privacy in the Constitution. I can find this:

Take the first complete thought from the first sentence, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." What this means is that the people have a right to be secure. To do that they must be able to keep things private, or hidden from the government, and everyone else too. It's not all that hard to grasp.

Justice Scalia (joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Thomas in dissent):

While overruling the outcome of Bowers, the Court leaves strangely untouched its central legal conclusion: Respondent would have us announce ... a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do. Instead the Court simply describes petitioners conduct as an exercise of their liberty (which it undoubtedly is) and proceeds to apply an unheard-of form of rational-basis review that will have far-reaching implications beyond this case.

I'm reading through the Kennedy opinion now. I'm now at a point where Kennedy is arguing that there wasn't really a long legal history of criminalizing homosexual acts as such. It strikes me as being as bad and tendentious history as Blackmun's pseudohistory in Roe v. Wade. It must be taken right out of the briefs of the lawyers arguing for Lawrence and Garner. Lawyers' history in briefs is notoriously bad.

If folks don't realize what's going on, here's a clue: the entire exercise was part of the homo agenda to force their deviant behavior to be protected and given the same right to marriages, etc., equal to the traditional institution of marriage. The homo agenda is to transform this nation into their deviancy play ground.

While I agree with you on the agenda, this decision does not have to be a stepping stone to homosexual "marriage". Not jailing them for their perversions does not have to equate to state sanctioning of them.

Really, when you think about it, what's more worrisome -- the idea of two people having sex in the privacy of their own home or the government bursting in to your bedroom in the middle of the night to make sure you're only having sex with your wife and, of course, in the proper missionary position?

"Hey guy what about sex btw a man and women? shouldnt that be illeagle too? Why not?"

I believe that laws against sodomy do apply to "man an women." And as to the outlawing of sex between "man an women" that is a ridiculous question. Would you consider a law that would end all humanity the same as a law against man sticking his penis in your butt?

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